Idle
hands are the devil's playground notwithstanding, some experts now believe
that you should let children be bored, so they can develop their innate
ability to be creative:

Dr Teresa Belton told the BBC cultural expectations that children should
be constantly active could hamper the development of their imagination.
[...]

Dr Belton said: "Lack of things to do spurred her to talk to people
she would not otherwise have engaged with and to try activities she
would not, under other circumstances, have experienced, such as talking
to elderly neighbours and learning to bake cakes.

"Boredom is often associated with solitude and Syal spent hours
of her early life staring out of the window across fields and woods,
watching the changing weather and seasons.

"But importantly boredom made her write. She kept a diary from
a young age, filling it with observations, short stories, poems, and
diatribe. And she attributes these early beginnings to becoming a writer
late in life."